Making the reader feel
Syntactic iconicity in poetry.
Lesley Jeffries
University of Huddersfield
‘Broadcast’ by Philip Larkin
Giant whispering and coughing from
Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
A snivel on the violins:
‘Broadcast’ by Philip Larkin
Giant whispering and coughing from
Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
A snivel on the violins:
‘Broadcast’ by Philip Larkin
Giant whispering and coughing from
Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
A snivel on the violins:
‘Broadcast’ by Philip Larkin
Giant whispering and coughing from
Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
A snivel on the violins:
‘Broadcast’ by Philip Larkin
Giant whispering and coughing from
Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
A snivel on the violins:
‘Broadcast’ by Philip Larkin
Giant whispering and coughing from
Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
A snivel on the violins:
Doorsteps
She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
First she smoothed already-softened butter
on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
herringboned across a doylied plate.
Doorsteps
She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
First she smoothed already-softened butter
on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
herringboned across a doylied plate.
Doorsteps
She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
First she smoothed already-softened butter
on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
herringboned across a doylied plate.
Doorsteps
She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
First she smoothed already-softened butter
on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
herringboned across a doylied plate.
Doorsteps
She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
First she smoothed already-softened butter
on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
herringboned across a doylied plate.
Doorsteps
She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
First she smoothed already-softened butter
on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
herringboned across a doylied plate.
Dulce et decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we
cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our
backs
And towards our distant rest began to
trudge.
Dulce et decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we
cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our
backs
And towards our distant rest began to
trudge.
Dulce et decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we
cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our
backs
And towards our distant rest began to
trudge.
Dulce et decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we
cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our
backs
And towards our distant rest began to
trudge.
Robbing Myself
The front room, our crimson chamber,
With our white-painted bookshelves, our patient books,
The rickety walnut desk II paid six pounds for,
The horse-hair Victorian chair I got for five shillings,
Waited only for us.
Robbing Myself
The front room, our crimson chamber,
With our white-painted bookshelves, our patient books,
The rickety walnut desk I paid six pounds for,
The horse-hair Victorian chair I got for five shillings,
Waited only for us.
Robbing Myself
The front room, our crimson chamber,
With our white-painted bookshelves, our patient books,
The rickety walnut desk I paid six pounds for,
The horse-hair Victorian chair I got for five shillings,
Waited only for us.
Müller (1999:394)

The study of iconicity provides an ideal
field of research for linguists and
literary critics alike and may thus help
to bridge the gulf between the two
disciplines which has steadily widened
in the course of the twentieth century.
Fischer (1999:346)

only in imagic iconicity, is there a straight
iconic link between the verbal sign and the
image or object (…), as for instance in
onomatopoeia. Diagrammatic iconicity is
more like a topographic map, where the
relation between objects or concepts in the
real world (as we see it) can be deduced
from the relations indicated on the map
Onomatopoeia:
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quack, moo, baa
squawk, squeak, squeal
clap, slap, thwack, bong, ting
whistling wind
the knock of sailing boats on the net
webbed wall (Dylan Thomas)
Imagic iconicity: tube line
Diagrammatic iconicity: tube map
Direct experience of language
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Sound
Sight
Linearity – time (and space)
Müller (2001:305)

What the linguistic structure imitates is not
external reality, but a subjective perception
or, rather, conception of reality, a mental
structure which is related to external reality
but does not merely imitate or copy it.
Rhetorical features, for instance, schemes
like asyndeton and climax or different forms
of word-order, are structuring and ordering
devices, which point to the structure and
activity of the mind and to cognitive and
epistemological processes
Müller (2001:319):

In this as in many other cases in
rhetorical speech it is just the deviation
from the iconic norm which manifests
iconicity most conspicuously. This is
iconicity, to be sure, on a level different
from the mere miming of external
reality. It is non-objective or, to use
Tabakowska’s term once more,
‘experiential iconicity’.
Müller (2001:406)

But even then Collins uses protracting syntactic
devices, an adverbial phrase and a passive
construction which shifts the agent of the action to a
prepositional phrase…The following one-sentence
paragraph describes the protagonist’s physical
reaction to the event…yet again not without the use
of suspense-increasing syntactic devices (inversion
of the word order, the use of adverbial elements,
parenthesis)…This is indeed a supreme example of
the art of creating suspense.
‘The Unprofessionals’
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2nd year stylistics of contemporary
poetry class
Mixed lang/lit students
Mostly (not all) 19-20 years old
Almost complete consensus
One exception!
Different to my own reactions
Explanations?
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Firstly my interpretation of ‘The
Unprofessionals’ may have been based on
textual cues which my students missed.
Secondly, they (and I) may have been
reacting to an unambiguous narrative from
their (my) own experiential perspective.
Finally, there may be textual cues to both
interpretations, which we reacted to
differently because of our age, experience
or background.
Readers’ iconicity?
Conceptual iconicity
Could information structure provide a
better basis than syntax for explaining
syntactic iconicity?
 Emotional iconicity
Is a reader-based approach one way to
describe the iconic effects of syntactic
deviance?

Syntax – iconic meaning?
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Readers’ reactions to deviation in
syntax – based on expectations of
information structure.
The basic strands of these
expectations are related to old and
new information and complexity/length
of clause elements
Is this another ‘natural’ iconicity?
English information structure:
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There will be clause structure;
Subjects will be relatively short;
Predicators will be arrived at fairly quickly;
Adverbials will be relatively few in number and
short, particularly before Subject and Predicator;
The focal point will be longer than the earlier
elements, and will bring in the new information;
Optional clause elements of any length will occur
late in the clause, preferably after the focus, and
certainly after the Predicator; They will not be
excessively long or numerous
Deviations from this norm will have effects.
1st stanza

When the worst thing happens,
That uproots the future,
That you must live for every hour of
your future,
1st stanza

When the worst thing happens,
That uproots the future,
That you must live for every hour of
your future,
1st stanza

When the worst thing happens,
That uproots the future,
That you must live for every hour of
your future,
1st stanza
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When the worst thing happens,
That uproots the future,
That you must live for every hour of
your future,
A three-line adverbial clause, with no
sign of the main clause so far
2nd stanza

They come,
Unorganized, inarticulate, unprofessional;
2nd stanza
S
P

They come,
Unorganized, inarticulate, unprofessional;
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Short main clause with simple
elements, cutting through long
adverbial clause of previous stanza
2nd stanza
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S
P
They come,
Unorganized, inarticulate, unprofessional;
The presence of these people is a
(syntactic) relief, but they turn out to be
bumbling and ineffectual;
Non-obligatory clause elements;
Note 3-part list of multi-syllabic words and
unprofessional used as adjective here.
3rd stanza
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They come sheepishly, sit with you, holding
hands,
From tea to tea, from Anadin to Valium,
Sleeping on put-you-ups, answering the
phone,
Coming in shifts, spontaneously,
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Two main clauses, elaborating on earlier
one – they are still a comfort, though
sheepish.
3rd stanza
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They come sheepishly, sit with you, holding
hands,
From tea to tea, from Anadin to Valium,
Sleeping on put-you-ups, answering the
phone,
Coming in shifts, spontaneously,
A string of non-finite adverbial clauses
further elaborating what these people do
when they arrive. Verbs in progressive form.
4th stanza
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Talking sometimes,
About wallflowers, and fishing, and
why
Dealing with Kleenex and kettles,
Doing the washing up and the
shopping,
Continuing the string of adverbial
clauses with –ing verbal forms
5th stanza
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Like civilians in a shelter, under
bombardment,
Holding hands and sitting it out
Through the immortality of all the
seconds,
Until the blunting of time,
This last adverbial clause introduced
by adverbials
5th stanza
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Like civilians in a shelter, under
bombardment,
Holding hands and sitting it out
Through the immortality of all the
seconds,
Until the blunting of time,
The main elements of this last clause
5th stanza
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Like civilians in a shelter, under
bombardment,
Holding hands and sitting it out
Through the immortality of all the
seconds,
Until the blunting of time.
This last adverbial clause also followed
by non-obligatory adverbials (PPs)
Iconicity in the poem
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iconicity - a direct reflection of the dynamics of the
situation in the information structure of the syntax.
juxtaposition of subordinate clauses and main
clauses may cause the reader not just to perceive
but to actually experience the feelings of frustration
and resignation described.
ongoing presence of the vacuously active
‘unprofessionals’, against such a bleak background,
is, perversely, rather comforting
tension between what they actually do and the fact
that they are there continuously reflects both sides
of the discrepancy noted in class.
Unprofessionals – good or bad?
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Noun / adjective
Syntactic relief and frustration
Continuity of presence of the
unprofessionals
Schematic knowledge – cultural
difference and local practice?
Personal experience
Conclusions
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There may be some value in taking norms of
information structure and length/complexity
of clause elements as a basis for syntactic
analysis of poetic syntax.
This may provide deeper insights into the
reader’s more unconscious responses.
Our definitions of iconicity need further
development, to encompass different kinds
of mimesis relating to different aspects of
communicative process.
References
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Fischer, O., (1999) ‘On the Role Played by Iconicity
in Grammaticalisation Processes’ in Nänny, M. and
Fischer, O. (Editors) 1999:345-374.
Jeffries (1993) The Language of Twentieth Century
Poetry; Basingstoke, Macmillan.
Jeffries, L. (2001) ‘Schema theory and White
Asparagus: cultural multilingualism among readers
of texts’, Language and Literature 10(4): 325-43.
Jeffries, L. and McIntyre, D. (2010) Stylistics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jeffries, Lesley (2001) ‘Schema affirmation and
White Asparagus: cultural multilingualism among
readers of texts.’ Language and Literature, 10 (4):
325-343.
References
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Jeffries, Lesley (2008) ‘The role of style in readerinvolvement: Deictic shifting in contemporary
poems.’ Journal of Literary Semantics, 37 (1): 6985.
Müller, W. (1999) ‘The Iconic Use of Syntax in
British and American Fiction’ Nänny, M. and
Fischer, O. (Editors) 1999:393-408.
Müller, W. (2001) ‘Iconicity and rhetoric. A note on
the iconic force of rhetorical figures in Shakespeare’
Fischer, O. and Nänny, M. (Editors) (2001: 305322).
Nänny, M. and Fischer, O. (Editors) (1999) Form
Miming Meaning. Philadelphia, PA, USA: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.